John 18:15-27 Jesus' trials part I, and Peter's denial

The next section interleaves the narratives of two trials and Peter's denial. Only Luke 23:6-11 records a third trial, before Herod. John records the trial before the religious court and the trial in the civil court.

Following the narrative of Peter after Jesus was arrested, John 18:15-18 and 25-27. Peter's close following of Jesus, and then his denial are recorded in all of the gospels. (Matthew 26:69-75, Mark 14:66-72, Luke 22:55-62) John speaks of himself in the third person, so he must have been that other disciple who was known to the high priest and entered with Jesus into the court of the high priest. So he also arranged for Peter to come inside the court.  While they are standing around the charcoal fire, casual banter with the slaves who were standing there, one of them recognized Peter as having been with Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. John mentions that this slave was a relative of the slave whose ear Peter had cut off, so it is possible that there was a bit of a threat in this recognition. In any event, Peter denied being with Jesus in the garden, or even knowing Him, in three separate statements according to the other gospels. Immediately after the third denial, a rooster crowed. This fulfilled Jesus' prophetic warning to Peter (Matthew 26:34, Mark 14:30, Luke 22:60, John 13:38). Luke records that The Lord turned and looked at Peter after the rooster crowed.

          In that day, farm animals were virtually everywhere. Roosters crow all the time during the day, but not at night. Since they will crow when the sky begins to lighten before sunrise, their crowing is often seen as announcing dawn. So Jesus' prophecy was most likely initially taken by Peter to mean that before sunrise the next morning this would happen. However, given all that transpires in this narrative after the rooster crowed, it is unlikely that Peter's denial occurred that late in the night. So the crowing of the rooster in the middle of the night was most likely a sign from God that Jesus' prophecy had been fulfilled. Matthew 26:75 records the Peter went out and wept bitterly. The guilt and self-condemnation must have been overwhelming.

          Is there even a possibility of restoration after a denial of faith, a breach of relationship? Most likely Peter did not think so. He went into hiding, and even after the resurrection, he returned to fishing. But John records that immediately after telling Peter that he would deny Him (John 13:38) Jesus told them to not let their heart be troubled (John 14:1). His love is greater than their weakness. It apparently took Peter until Pentecost (50 days later) to fully accept this.

John 18:1-11 Jesus' arrest

John 18:1-11 The arrest of Jesus is also recorded in Matthew 26:47-56, Mark 14:43-51, Luke 22:47-53. In the dark, Judas' assistance was essential to the soldiers arresting the correct person. Why did he receive Roman soldiers to arrest Jesus? Evidently the chief priests and Pharisees didn't trust the temple guard.

          Here we have another of the great "I am"s recorded in John. In this instance, there must have been a small revelation of the power of God when Jesus, God incarnate in the flesh, said His own name, the Roman soldiers drew back and fell to the ground. Why? Perhaps this was a foretaste of the phenomenon known as being slain in the Spirit. Perhaps it was that human flesh cannot bear the revealed presence of God. It only happened once.  When the conversation was repeated, Jesus once again veiled His deity in flesh and confirmed His identity as 'the Nazarene', not as 'the Christ'.

          The always impetuous Peter drew the sword to defend Jesus (mentioned also in Luke 22:38) and cut off the ear of the high priest's servant. John records the slave's name, while Luke 22:51 records that Jesus healed the slave's ear. But Matthew 26:52-56 records Jesus' perspective on the use of force. God has more than ample military power available in the legions of angels, but that is not going to accomplish the Father's plan.  The way of the world is to use swords and clubs.  The way of Jesus is to fulfill the Father's plan, according to the Scriptures (which is repeated for emphasis in Matthew 26:54 & 56). And so Jesus gives us the final example before His arrest of how God's kingdom is built: not by might, not by power, but by His Spirit, by doing the Father's will according to the Scriptures.

          The cup mentioned in John 18:11 may serve as a double metaphor, both for the specific things that the Father had given Jesus to accomplish, and for the blood that He was about to shed, which is symbolized in the communion cup (Luke 22:20). Just as the entire Passover Seder ceremony dripped with symbolism of the plan of salvation in the preceding hours, so it was now to come to pass so that we slow learners could understand it.

          It is a shame that when Jesus asked them who did they seek and they said 'Jesus the Nazarene', they did not seek Him as the Greeks earlier had (John 12:20) in order to meet the Messiah. In that instance, Jesus had immediately connected their desire to see Him to His coming death and the release of resurrection power. And so in this instance also, but in this case, those seeking Him were not looking for the Messiah.

John 17:13-26 Jesus' valedictory prayer

John 17:13-26 Jesus now makes six specific petitions for his disciples. Verse 20 indicates that these petitions are not just for those disciples in the room with Him, but for all who believe in Him at any time and place.

•    Joy - in verse 13, Jesus asks the Father that His disciples may have the same fullness of joy that He had.

•    Evil - in verses 14-16, Jesus acknowledges that the world will hate them, but He does not ask the Father to take them out of the world, but that He protect them from the evil. The will be in the world even though they are not of the world, but that does not mean they are the evil one's prey.

•    Sanctity - in verses 17-19 Jesus asks the Father to sanctify the disciples in truth, which is the Father's word. Hagiozon suggests separation and purification, in this case to the truth of the Father's word. Jesus asks the Father to set them apart to His word, just as He has Himself, and yet they are going to go into the world. How they can be separated yet in the world is implicit in His prayer - that the Father will empower them (and us) to live lives within the world yet according to the words the Father gave.

•    Unity - in verses 20-23 Jesus repeats His prayer for unity among the disciples. He repeats His statement that the world would know that Jesus had sent them and that the Father had sent Jesus, when those who believe in Him are one, just as Jesus and the Father are one.

•    See Him - in verse 24 Jesus states His desire that those whom God has given Him be with Him and see His glory. Jesus also asks the Father that His disciples may see the love of the Father for Jesus before the world was created. This love will be part and parcel of the glory that the disciples will see when they are in Jesus, which is the brightness of His magnificence, blessedness, majestic excellence. That they (and we) see this glory would seem to imply that in this life, being in the world but not of the world, Jesus wants us nonetheless to experience a part of that glory of the Father's approval of Him, which He is sharing with His disciples. This glory and this love do not appear to be separate things, but different aspects of the relationship that the Father has with Jesus - a single thing that has multiple attributes that are inseparable.

•    Knowing the Father - in verses 25-26 Jesus closes His final prayer by restating His desire that the relationship He has with the Father, the love that the Father has for Him, will be in His disciples.

John 17:6-12 Jesus' prayer for unity

John 17:6-12 Jesus now turns from glory to the name of the Father. Jesus manifested the Father's name to the disciples, and kept them in His name while He was on the earth, and now He asks the Father to continue to keep them in His name after Jesus leaves the world. The name of the Father is not a magical incantation to grant special powers or answered prayer to the one who says it. Jesus has a specific understanding of what it means to keep His disciples in the Father's name. It means that they believed that Jesus came from the Father and that everything He said and did was also from the Father. They understood the unity between Jesus and the Father. And so Jesus' request to the Father is that they continue to be united with each other in continuing to believe in Jesus' unity with the Father. Jesus had succeeded in His mission, except that Judas had been lost, but that was according to the foreknowledge of Father as manifested in the prophets. (John 17:12, a reference to Psalm 41:9).

          It is probably fair to believe that this prayer is not just for the disciples in the room on that occasion, but that Jesus was also praying for all of His followers through the ages. And generally, believers through the ages to the present time have believed that the words that He gave were in fact the words of God. It is only in recent times, since the 19th century, that some theologians began to teach that only some of Jesus' words came from the Father. But more troubling is that Jesus' prayer that His followers be one just as He and the Father are one has not been answered.

          We could, I suppose, make this into a tautology, that only those who believe everything Jesus said came from the Father and also are united with all other believers are those that God has chosen to be the property of Jesus. But that effectively changes this from a petition to God into a statement of conditions for being Jesus' disciple. It seems to run counter to Jesus' intention in this prayer. Perhaps there might be some underlying connection between doubting the words of Jesus and the dissolution of the unity of believers. But the timing seems wrong. The so-called higher criticism surfaced in the 19th century but the western church was torn apart in the 15th and 16th centuries. The deeper connection seems to be that the church leadership from 1470-1530 lived in a manner that totally denied the words of Jesus and became effectively of the world, and not of Christ. (See, for example, Barbara Tuchman's The March of Folly for a description of how corrupt church leaders provoked the protestant secession.) This suggests that the interior connection here is that those who receive and believe the words of Jesus, and take them seriously enough to actually do what He says to do, will be united in Spirit with each other as well as with the Father and with Jesus. But as for those who would use Jesus' name or abscond with the authority of the Father in order to do their own thing, or advance their own agenda under false pretenses, well, the unity thing isn't going to happen.

          There is another possible interpretation of the unity that Jesus prayed for. The Father and Jesus are two people. Perhaps this prayer is really focused on small groups of believers. Jesus prayed for His disciples, of whom eleven remained with Him. The kind of unity that He and the Father had could possibly be viewed as impractical for large numbers of people or large organizations. One interpretation of this would be that Jesus was praying for the groups of two or three that gather in His name. (Matthew 18:20) If that is the case, what does this kind of unity look like? Perhaps it is the unity of common beliefs, common goals, shared experiences, shared suffering. Such unity is possible as the elemental basis of the church. It wouldn't happen in large church services, but in small groups, in families or groups of close friends with a common faith, who live their lives together. In the case of the eleven disciples, the book of Acts records theirs lives, daily meeting for prayer and fellowship. As the church grew, people met in each other’s' houses, which couldn't have been very large groups. Perhaps this lifestyle was the obvious (to them) context in which Jesus' prayer for unity was answered.

          In mentioning the betrayal of Judas, there seems a strong suggestion of foreknowledge in Jesus' statement that He had kept those God had given Him. Judas had heard and seen everything that the other disciples had, yet he had chosen a path of treason. Perhaps he had not intended to go that path at the beginning, but Jesus' statement makes it clear that these events had been foreknown and recorded in the scripture. Judas is called the son of destruction. Whether that refers to his own destruction or his attempt to destroy Jesus, or a spiritual inheritance from the destroyer, calling him a son of that suggests that he was never one whom the Father had given Jesus. So it would not have been possible for Jesus to keep him in the name of the Father, because he was never really there in the first place.

John 17:1-5 Jesus' prayer for God's glory

John 17:1- 5 We now have John's record of Jesus' final prayer for His disciples. Every petition in this prayer meet all the contextual and heart-desires that He had previously talked about for answered prayer. Yet we will find that some of His prayer has not been answered. In many respects, Jesus' prayer is as much a sermon for His disciples as it is a petition to the Father.

          First, Jesus speaks of glory. In this petition, Jesus asks the Father to glorify Him, the Son, that He may in turn glorify His Father. And the nature of this glory is very specifically defined. Glory will accrue to the Father through the Son in the act of giving eternal life to those whom the Father has given to the Son, and the mechanism by which they are given eternal life is that they will know the Father and the Son. Jesus speaks of the glory He had with the Father before the world was. That would have been a different sort of glory because it could not have involved giving eternal life to people who were not yet created.

          In his essay title "The Weight of Glory", C.S. Lewis expounds on what glory means. The title of the essay is in itself a bit of wordplay, because the Greek word for glory means weight. What does weight have to do with God's glory? It seems to be that the presence of God's manifested approval is heavy. It weighs on us heavily. It is not something that God, or that we, take lightly. So Jesus had the Father's approval before the world was created. And Jesus now has an even greater weight of God's approval in that He has accomplished the work that the Father has sent Him to do, which is to bring those who receive Him into knowledge of the Father. And it appears when He says that they know Him, it is not book-learning or head-knowledge, but the biblical since of knowing, that is, by intimate contact and interaction. This is the glory that Jesus asks the Father to manifest, and that implicitly Jesus wants the disciples to understand. He will be glorified in their close relationship to the Father.

John 16:16-33 I have overcome the world

John 16:16-22 Once again Jesus returns to the topic of His coming passion. Whether He does so because the disciples still didn't understand (which seems evident from their questions) or because He knew they would need a lot of encouragement to get through the next few days, He basically repeats Himself. (John 13:33, 14:2-4, 14:28, 16:5) Here He uses the metaphor of childbirth to describe the coming events. The important aspect of this metaphor is not to identify who is the mother, the father, the midwife, the newborn child. Jesus' primary point is that childbirth is both painful (Genesis 3:16) and hard work. But both of these are forgotten for joy when a new person comes into the world. So it will be with His passion.

         

John 16:23-28 Jesus explains the reason that they will be able to pray with confidence. Very simply, He is going to the Father, and the Father Himself loves them. John 16:23-24 could be seen as a blank check, but that would wrench these verses out of context. Just before this and just after this He has talked about completing the plan of redemption and the Father's love for them, so this promise would seem to be applicable to prayers that are in the context of the love of God and the redemption of mankind. Prayer is not a matter of saying some magic formula like an incantation, such as repeating the Lord's Prayer or praying to the Father in Jesus' name. Prayer that Jesus and the Father will do is sincere prayer from a heart that seeks to bring glory to Jesus, and seeks to advance His kingdom by the words and actions of His disciples that accompany their prayers. Sincere care for others, carrying out His original plan of humankind being God's representative to carry His words to the world, showing His love to the world, bringing His will to the lives of people - these are the context in which anything the disciples ask, He will do, because He will be with the Father.

John 16:29-33 Jesus' disciples now think they understand Him, and reaffirm their faith in Him. Jesus' final words, before He prays for them, is to one more time encourage them in the coming time of testing. They do not need to worry about Him because the Father is with Him. His closing statement is that they can have courage because He has overcome the world. Since the world lies in the power of the devil this might mean He has defeated Satan. However, there is more. The world system implements the devil's plan but has a power that continues apart from that. Humans have devised governments and societies with organizations and behavior norms that have multiple sources (the world, the flesh, and the devil). Jesus has overcome all of this. Whatever they encounter in the world, regardless of its provenance, He has already overcome it.

John 16:5-15 The Holy Spirit will bring conviction

John 16:5-15 First, Jesus talks about His imminent departure, as a means of further explaining the Holy Spirit. Understanding this, the disciples grieve. Jesus does not try to talk them out of their sorrow. Rather, He objectively explains the enormous benefit they will derive from His going away. He does not dwell on the plan of redemption, of the fact that their sins will be forgiven through His atoning sacrifice. Not at all. The Holy Spirit cannot indwell them unless He goes back to the Father and sends Him.

          In the Old Testament, there are a few occasions when the Holy Spirit came upon select individuals. (Numbers 11:25, 24:2; Judges 3:10,11:29; I Samuel 16:13; 19:20&23; and others. ) But the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on all mankind, although promised (Joel 2:28-29) cannot happen until His departure. Why is this? Jesus does not directly explain. One might theorize that the atonement was necessary because the Holy Spirit cannot indwell those who still bear the guilt of sin. But if so, how could the Holy Spirit have come upon the elders in Moses’ time, Balaam, Othniel, Jephthah, Samson, David, Saul, and Saul’s men?  Perhaps it was Jesus' physical presence that precluded Holy Spirit indwelling. I think it must remain a mystery.

          Jesus goes on to talk about how the Holy Spirit interacts with the world. He brings conviction. We often speak of convictions as ones' most strongly held beliefs but that does not seem to be Jesus' meaning here. It seems closer to the conviction that a court might render, except that in this case, it is the court of the individual's conscience. There are three aspects of the Holy Spirit's ministry to the world.

•    He will convict the world concerning sin, because the world does not believe in Him.

•    He will convict the world concerning righteousness, because He is going to the Father and they (the disciples) will see Him no more

•    He will convict the world concerning judgment, because the ruler of the world (i.e., Satan) has been judged.

          The sin of the world is not at its core breaking God's rules or violating His holiness. The core root of the world's sin is refusing to believe in Jesus. He means to believe in Him with a conviction that is strong enough to take what He says seriously, and act and live in accordance with it. The Holy Spirit will not give the world a clear conscience. They are free to reject Jesus, but they cannot escape the inner certitude that they have rejected Him and that they are guilty for this reason. When the world hears the gospel preached, the Holy Spirit bears witness that it is true. Every person of some minimal age (often called the age of accountability) has had this experience. Earlier Jesus had said that they were not guilty when they acted in ignorance, but now He has come and revealed the truth and they have no excuse. They are guilty and the Holy Spirit tells them so.

          The righteousness that the world is convicted of concerns the lives of Jesus' disciples when He is no longer physically present. The world will see the Holy Spirit-imbued lifestyle of Jesus' disciples and the Holy Spirit will bring conviction to the world that their lifestyles are right. And this is in the absence of the physical presence of Jesus. The world may not understand how Jesus' followers can live this way.  Lives of sacrificial love, untainted holiness, joy in the midst of hardship. How the Holy Spirit empowers believers is a mystery to the world. But the world cannot escape the inner knowledge that Jesus' people are different, and that difference is right and good.

          The judgment that the world is convicted of relates to the role of the devil in the world. The devil is the ruler of the world (I John 5:19), but he has been judged (Genesis 3:14-15) and the world knows that it cannot escape the consequences of partaking of his kingdom, because the Holy Spirit tells this to people in the world with the conviction of certainty. 

          That the certainty of judgment hangs over the world is evidenced in politics, economics, entertainment, even philosophy. It is not only Christians who have an eschatological view of life. The threat of World War 3 hung over the heads of a whole generation. The fear of another Great Depression haunts many economic diatribes. How many movies and books depict a worldwide catastrophe of one kind or another, a new dark age following a cataclysmic war or epidemic? Why? Because all men feel the conviction that the choices we have made to pander to the flesh, to selfishly exploit other people or the natural world, and to cooperate with spiritual forces of darkness in high places will ultimately yield the bitter fruit that God warned Adam about. (Genesis 3:17-19) The Holy Spirit gives people inner certainty of this. Even if the world avoids Ragarnok during their lifetime, there will be an accounting afterwards in front of the judge. The panache of those who deny this by denying God's existence are whistling in the dark.

          Jesus then turns to the role of the Holy Spirit in the lives of His disciples. They cannot possibly remember everything He taught them. But the Holy Spirit will bring it back to them. Or, if they have completely forgotten what He told them, then the Holy Spirit will tell them directly. Just as Jesus only did what He saw the Father doing, so the Holy Spirit will only tell them the things of Jesus and the Father. This is in sharp contrast to the conviction that the Holy Spirit brings to the world. The righteousness that the world is convicted of is life and joy to Jesus' disciples. There is no fear because perfect love casts out fear. (I John 4:18).